Amara Blog

Universal Subtitles is now ‘Amara’

admin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:02:00 +0000

Over the past few months, we’ve been growing very fast. It’s been exciting: more videos, more subtitles, more volunteers. We’ve been seeing an increase in remarkable viral moments, like the (controversial) KONY 2012 video being translated into 37 languages on our platform in less than a week.

And we’re hearing from more and more video publishers that want to launch volunteer communities, as PBS Newshour recently did (you can join their team here!).

For a few important reasons, ‘Universal Subtitles’ is no longer the best name for us. As our community grows and our platform expands, we need a name that’s less specific (what if someday we add functionality that’s not just for subtitles?) and that really captures the sense of community that we’re hoping to build– as a non-profit with a social mission, we are certainly not a typical web startup. Changing a name is hard, but we’ve found a new name that feels right.

And that new name… is Amara. The word ‘Amara’ means several things– it’s a form of the Spanish verb amar, ‘to love’ and it means ‘eternal’ in Sanskrit. We like these meanings and others.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be making the biggest announcements we’ve ever had, and with those, what started as Universal Subtitles will be transitioning to the name Amara. Our URL won’t change at first — it’s a big project that we want to undertake carefully — but ‘Amara’ will start to replace ‘Universal Subtitles’ throughout our site and in our announcements.

We’re encouraged by the community developing around Amara. If you’re excited by the idea of making video accessible to those who are hard of hearing and to audiences around the world in any language, just add a video URL to start subtitling or translating now.

Translate the State of the Union

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:58:20 +0000

Today we were very proud to launch the PBS NewsHour translation team, part of their Open Election 2012 project.

The first video we’re working on together is the State of the Union speech– help us translate it!

Translate the State of the Union Here

Now hiring django developer for Universal Subtitles

admin — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:53:10 +0000

Universal Subtitles is a collaborative and award-winning platform for subtitling and translating online video. We’ve created an elegant subtitling tool that you can embed into any webpage, for almost any video. And we’re building an online community to subtitle and translate the world’s most popular and significant videos.

We’re looking for a web developer who is either (or both):

1) An experienced Django developer (preferred) or…

2) An experienced developer of web applications with strong fundamentals and a track record of quickly learning new frameworks.

If you’re awesome and you’re excited about our project, we want to talk to you. Though the need we have right now is for someone who can rapidly build user facing features on our subtitle collaboration site, and we think knowing Django inside out will help.

The project is free and open source, available under the AGPL license, and our organization is a 501(c)3 non-profit. Our supporters include Mozilla and the MacArthur Foundation. And our tool has been used by the New York Times in their Egypt coverage and by Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/) in their ongoing effort to translate their award-winning educational videos.

This is an ideal gig for someone who wants to build software to create social change. You’ll be building features to help an active and growing community do world changing work, as well as a a free, open source JavaScript/HTML5 widget that can go head to head with any competing Flash, iOS, or desktop subtitling app.

Things that make you an even stronger candidate, from our point of view:

* Ability to make reasonable UI/UX decisions on the fly as you code
* Good communication skills for working with developers in other organizations (partners, clients)
* Project management experience

To apply, send a resume (txt or rtf) to jobs@pculture.org

Universal Subtitles wins 3 awards in 4 months!

admin — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:36:55 +0000

I almost can’t believe it, but Universal Subtitles has won three separate awards in the past 4 months! I am just so proud of our team, especially since some of the best stuff that we’re working on hasn’t even been released yet (January is going to be very exciting).

I’m also very pleased that each award honors Universal Subtitles for slightly different reasons — equality, accessibility, and intercultural innovation. It speaks to our hope that by making subtitling common instead of rare, we will all benefit, each in different ways.

2011 Tech Award for Advancing Equality

FCC Award for Advancement in Accessibility

Intercultural Innovation Award

Best Practices for Subtitling Videos

Leen — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:24:47 +0000

We’ve looked to the BBC and WGBH to find some of the best practices for creating captions and subtitles. These should help you as you start captioning and translating.

7 Top Tips for Subtitling

Timing – captions should be timed to appear and disappear exactly when the words are spoken.

Translate meaning not words – sometimes it’s hard to get the meaning across when translating something from a different language. As noted in this fansubbing guide is that you don’t need to directly translate the words, just make sure to get the point across to the audience.

Maintain the speaker’s style of speech – taking into account register, nationality, era, etc. This will affect your choice of vocabulary.
e.g.register: mother vs mum; deceased vs dead; intercourse vs sex;
nationality: mom vs mum; trousers vs pants;
era: wireless vs radio; hackney cab vs taxi.

Inaudible speech – speech can be inaudible for different reasons, put up a label explaining the cause.
e.g. APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
TRAIN DROWNS HIS WORDS

Sound effects – show sound effect captions in lowercase italics enclosed in parentheses. It’s important to to put sound effects in between parentheses, whether its background noise or the source of the sound.

e.g.(dog barking) (child screaming) (whispering) (giggling)

Don’t edit out words – like “but” “so” or “too”. They may be short but they are often essential for expressing meaning.

Direct quotes – direct quotes by public figures should be captioned verbatim whenever possible. Since what they’re saying is pivotal, try to get everything they’re saying, if unsure, have someone check over your work.

Hope these tips help as you’re creating captions and subtitles. If you have additional ideas, thoughts, or tips, we’d love to hear them in the comments.

Sources – WGBH – Media Access Group – Captioning FAQ, BBC Subtitling Editorial Guidelines, and a fansubbing guide.

Translating the Impact of Nuclear Disasters

Emily — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:52:56 +0000

When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe occurred in March 2011, many people looked for a precedent that could give them an understanding of what this tragedy might mean in the long run. They soon found one – this year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

Since March, the Universal Subtitles community has been sharing information about Chernobyl as the eyes of the world once again turn to the question of nuclear power. Thanks to the hard working people who translated these videos, this info is now available in many languages and can be viewed and understood by an international audience.

A lot of people continue to share this interview, subtitled into Japanese, on Twitter. It is an examination of the nuclear disaster and its environmental consequences.

Information is also flowing the other direction. “Message from Fukishima,” is a plea for help from the people living with the consequences of the recent disaster in Japan.

The dedicated people translating this particular video are working together to reconstruct accurate subtitles. You can witness their teamwork by scrolling to the bottom of the Message From Fukushima page.

If you are inspired to help the people of Fukushima through Universal Subtitles, help us translate videos from Japan’s recovery so their message can be heard around the world.

Using Universal Subtitles To Track Libyan Conflict

Emily — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:32:53 +0000

The Libyan conflict has made international headlines this year and the Universal Subtitles community has absolutely taken notice. Our great volunteers have been translating videos into multiple languages, and Universal Subtitles is now being used as a medium through which world news can be shared with everyone.

This particular video is extremely popular among people following the conflict on Twitter. It presents a speech given by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the Libyan ruler’s son and colleague.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's Speech

In this next video from the Universal Subtitles site, watch President Barack Obama’s speech as he examines the corrupt ways of Libya’s ruler and the United States actions against him.

President Obama's Speech

If you are interested in following the Libyan conflict through Universal Subtitles, check out Alive in Libya, a free news source created by Libyan journalists.

Launching the Universal Subtitles Volunteer Team!

Leen — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:08:18 +0000

We’re looking for volunteers to caption and translate videos on our volunteer team page. We’ve curated some fascinating videos from non-profit and educational partners that deserve a global audience.

Even if you don’t speak multiple languages you can still help make the video more accessible by creating captions. Anyone can join!

Why Volunteer?

Any video that you caption or translate has the potential to reach a global audience, and will also be available for anyone who is deaf or hard of hearing. If you want to see how this will look in practice, take a look at some examples of Universal Subtitles in action.

In addition to the volunteer page, we also have partners running volunteer teams, including Al Jazeera, MIT Open Courseware, Feminist Frequency, Khan Acadmey, and Streetfilms.

Any translations or captioning you do helps open up content to more people – spreading knowledge, cultural understanding, and fun. Please help us spread the word about Universal Subtitles, and join the volunteer team today!

Search is Finally Here for Universal Subtitles

Emily — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:41:30 +0000

Universal Subtitles has just been updated! Now with the new navigation bar and search box on every page, along with our new “Watch” page, it is a lot easier to search, explore, and navigate the site.

If you visit our homepage, the new navigation bar can be found in the upper right-hand corner of the site.

The new Navigation Bar

With this new addition, you can readily watch more videos, translate directly, and learn more about Universal Subtitles at an accelerated rate.

The search box at the top of the page is another great addition; now, you can search directly for a specific video.

Finally, the new watch page is a great new resource for Universal Subtitles users. By clicking on the “Watch” button in the navigation bar, you will arrive at a page full of interesting videos already translated into several languages.

The new Universal Subtitles is a great improvement, so check it out and support us by continuing to translate!

Subtitles are a Remix

anne — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:22:16 +0000

All creativity builds on what came before. This is the disarmingly simple and poignant message of Everything is a Remix, a four part video series and accompanying blog from New York filmmaker Kirby Ferguson. Part 3 of the series has exploded, getting more than 150,000 views in 4 days. Already, fans have completely translated the video into 8 languages.

Join the translation effort now:

“The Elements of Creativity” focuses on how copying and remix were essential elements in the development of the personal computer and the world wide web. Ferguson posted the video on Universal Subtitles so that his fans could help his message go global. By creating subtitles for the video, these fans become co-collaborators, spreading the word and making it ripe for the next wave of creativity to build upon. The ten minute video is now available in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, German, Italian and Danish, with more on the way. You can help translate too!